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Albertsons gift card promo: I finally bit the bullet

Albertsons has been running a gift card promotion for about two weeks now (Spend $100 on select gift cards, get $20 catalina) and I have been reading all these fantastic stories about how people are taking advantage of it. They are buying Home Depot and Lowe’s gift cards for home repairs, gift cards for fuel, gift cards for travel.

I have not been able to make a decision. I wanted to do the deal because it really is fantastic, but I did NOT want to spend money on things we don’t need. We have home repairs to do, but not anything we seriously need to do right now. We aren’t traveling anywhere in the near future, I couldn’t even find fuel gift cards at our local stores.

I finally made a decision. On what I believe is the last day of the promotion. (The signage says it ended on the 18th, but it worked for me this morning, so I think it goes through the end of today’s ad)

Christmas gifts! How did I not think of this before?

We set aside a certain amount in cash every month, starting in January, for what we expect to spend on Christmas gifts. This is one area we will spend money and that we do have the expendable cash. Hooray, I get to do the gift card deal! Finally.

I ended up buying a $100 Amazon gift card, mainly because Amazon has everything and usually for a fairly comparable price. I also bought two $50 Cabela’s gift cards that I will give as gifts to two people in my life who might actually drool when they open them.

I now have $40 in catalinas to use. I was planning on adding $40 to our grocery budget for our Freezer Cooking Day next week anyway, so this is perfect timing. Now we don’t have to dip into our savings.

Dear store promotions: How I love when you align the stars for me so I can save money on things I would be buying anyway.

I’ve been so excited about this deal, that I’ve been back 3 times to buy gift cards. I bought cards for father’s day gifts, for oil changes and we’re saving to go to disneyland in Dec., so I bought cards for that too. Didn’t spend any money I wasn’t already planning on spending and I got $100 in catalina’s as a result. Whoo-hooo. I’ve been using them to stock up on meat. Going to finish the stack this weekend when frozen chx goes on sale.

I so agree Melody, I thought long and hard about this too. I don’t like to spend money unnecessarily, but if you are going to buy something anyway and there is a gift card at Albertson’s for this, why not. Welcome to the club 🙂

I’ve bought $1000 worth of gift cards for airplane tickets, gift cards for Father’s Day/birthdays and Home Depot cards for upcoming summer projects. I’ve only spent two of the ten $20 catalinas so far, but since we already had planned on making these purchases and had the money saved up, I figured I couldn’t miss the opportunity to stretch my dollars 🙂 Unfortunately, my freezer is pretty full from the Zaycon chicken event, so I am trying to make a list of everything that we need/could use that I can’t get cheap with a coupon. Any ideas are appreciated! (I bought several of my giftcards this morning and the deal is still working through today)

In spite of the crazy price at Alby’s Faith, I was going to buy cheese because I always need it and it lasts forever. I’m also going to buy produce. Other than that, I have no brilliant ideas! It’s so hard to pay full price, even when you have a Cat. Let us know if you come up with any other great ideas. I have $40 to spend by Friday. I’ll probably buy some chicken since I missed out on Zaycon.